[clue-tech] Mephis linux

[Bruce Ediger]

On Thu, 20 Nov 2008, Roy J. Tellason wrote:

> My first linux box was a K6-200 (which I still have!  I only stopped using
> that as a server because of HD issues),  and my first install was Slackware
> 4.0 on a 1G or so drive and I installed *everything*,  so I could check it
> out.  This was back in 1999.  Now a complete install takes several CDs worth

Hey!  I have an old Gateway K6-400.  I did have Slackware 10, with a 40Gb
disk in it.  I decided to check if modern distros did have The Bloat,
so I looked up the oldest Slackware I could find on a CD: 3.2, ca 1995.

I had to find a couple of floppies to get the initial boot, but I was able
to put Slackware 3.2 on a 3 Gb drive.  Everything in 3 Gb.  You can tell
that Linux wasn't really a server candidate in those days: not even telnetd
runs by default.

I got "lspci" and OpenSSH to compile with only modest problems, upgraded to
kernel 2.0.40 and XFree86 4.7.99, and it seems to work fine.

> though I am quite selective about the packages that get installed.  Better?
> Maybe a little,  but there's also a lot of eye candy and other junk in there
> I could just as easily do without

I can testify to the truth of that after the Slackware 3.2 experiment. I think
I'll do an "expert" install next time around.  I looked into installing
the all-assembly "asmutils", but I think there's just a wee bit too much
incompatibility.  My guess is I'll have to retain all the stupid Gnome and
KDE libraries just to run Firefox, even though I'm a dedicated TWM user,
and I don't use any other "desktop environment" rubbish.